Why Your Voice Matters: What Last Year’s Data Taught Us

and Why We Need You Again Before This Year’s Survey Closes

Each year, your experiences help shape the direction of GAIN’s work. Last year’s neuroinclusion survey gave us valuable insights into the barriers and enablers of being face by our neurodivergent community. Over the last month we've shared some of that data in our blog, exploring just a handful of the most meaningful extracts from that data.

From diagnosis and identity, to recruitment, progression, leadership visibility, adjustments, and more. Every anecdote you shared, every experience you described, helped us build a pattern that organisations can learn from.

Across every dataset, one message shone through: neurodivergent people's experiences in the workplace are impacted through a series of key moments that matter, and which companies, leaders, managers, HR, and all colleagues have the ability to shape and impact. We learned how biased progression criteria, inaccessible processes and the pressure to mask continue to affect people’s wellbeing and opportunities. We saw how those invisible biases still influence who gets hired, who gets promoted, and who feels able to stay in the industry. And we saw the profound impact of visible role models, psychologically safe cultures, and managers who listen.

Your data also helped us explore the intersectionality of neurodiversity, and how vital it is to treat everyone as a whole, unique and complete individual who may exist in multiple worlds, because no one can be defined, recognised or supported through acknowledging only one aspect of themselves. It showed us where support is working, where it’s inconsistent, and where barriers continue to build over time. And it reinforced the urgent need for employers to support colleagues regardless of diagnosis, recognising that flexibility, universal design and autonomy help everyone, not just those who disclose.

This data helped shape and change the work we did in 2025. It informed the updates we made to our benchmarking processes, gathering more complete data. It shaped and refreshed the content of our educational workshops. It strengthened our guidance on leadership visibility, equitable progression, manager skills and adjustments. It helped us create collaborative initiatives such as the Adjustments Accessibility Hackathon, and it’s supporting the development of new industry playbooks and e-learning that will, when launched, help embed best practice across insurance, investment and finance.

Beyond our annual neuroinclusion survey, your responses to our recent pulse study on menopause and neurodiversity highlighted an intersection long overlooked in workplace policy. Those findings, and others like them, are helping us design a 2026 programme of shorter, targeted pulse surveys, each intended to shine light on areas where data is scarce and lived experience has been unheard for too long.

But in order for us to get the clarity we need to make this happen, we need your voice again. And we need more voices from people across all backgrounds.

What we need now is a timeline, and evidence of progress, of patterns, and of changes that only become visible when more people take part.

Higher participation allows us to explore disparities with greater accuracy, helping towards our ambition to build the UK’s first neurodiversity pay gap report, understand access barriers across different communities, and demonstrate the real industry impact of inclusive leadership and workplace adjustments.

The survey closes on 31st December 2025. Before it does, we’re asking;

• neurodivergent professionals

• neurodivergent individuals seeking work

• parents and carers, including neurodivergent parents

• allies and colleagues

• managers, leaders and HR

• members of our wider community

  
  

to share your experience. Whether your story is one of barrier or success, frustration or progress, it matters. Whether you're an active member of GAIN or never heard of us before today. Every response strengthens the evidence we take forward to employers, regulators and policymakers. Every piece of data helps us design tools, guidance and training that reflect the reality of the people we exist to support.

Your stories don’t just inform our work.They make change possible.

Take the 2025 GAIN Neurodiversity Survey now